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Arizona State University professor of electrical engineering Joseph Hui s building a company called Monarch Power to develop the Lotus, a 1.1-kilowatt solar “flower” that opens and closes with daylight and tracks the sun on its path across the sky.

Joseph Hui wants to make solar power cheap and mobile, even if he has to mount his device to an electric vehicle to get his point across.

The Arizona State University professor of electrical engineering is building a company called Monarch Power to develop the Lotus, a 1.1-kilowatt solar “flower” that opens and closes with daylight and tracks the sun on its path across the sky.

The Lotus has been under development for about two years at Monarch’s offices at ASU SkySong in Scottsdale. The roughly 10-foot-diameter solar dish is designed for multiple deployments and can go anywhere. Hui said his goal is to provide power where it’s needed, whether in Phoenix neighborhoods, the Australian Outback or the African savannas.

“My passion is really to help people lead a comfortable and sustainable life,” he said.

But the Lotus is more than just a solar dish. Hui’s plan is to roll out multiple products that include a small natural gas-powered turbine for when the sun isn’t shining, as well as options for a system that would provide clean water with the power produced. There’s also an eye on electric vehicles.

To demonstrate how mobile the Lotus is, he mounted one on a Tesla Roadster and carts it around to show just what it can do.

It’s also cheap. Really cheap by solar standards, where it takes tens of thousands of dollars to get a rooftop system. Hui says his system will cost about $4,000 before incentives. With incentives, it will be less than $2,000.

Monarch is aiming to bring power to people rather than making people move to cities to get power, he said.

“I’m going to go out and reverse what Thomas Edison has done,” said Hui, who believes in decentralized power without a need for the Edison-developed grid.

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